254 CHAUCER. 



the direct impression made on the eye or ear. He was the 

 first great poet who really loved outward nature as the 

 source of conscious pleasurable emotion. The Troubadour 

 hailed the return of spring ; but with him it was a piece of 

 empty ritualism. Chaucer took a true delight in the new 

 green of the leaves and the return of singing birds a 

 delight as simple as that of Robin Hood : 



&quot; In summer when the shaws be sheen, 



And leaves be large and long, 

 It is full merry in fair forest 

 To hear the small birds song.&quot; 



He has never so much as heard of the &quot; burthen and the 

 mystery of all this unintelligible world.&quot; His flowers and 

 trees and birds have never bothered themselves with Spinoza. 

 He himself sings more like a bird than any other poet, because 

 it never occurred to him, as to Goethe, that he ought to do so. 

 He pours himself out in sincere joy and thankfulness. When 

 we compare Spenser s imitations of him with the original 

 passages, we feel that the delight of the later poet was more 

 in the expression than in the thing itself. Nature with him 

 is only good to be transfigured by art. We walk among 

 Chaucer s sights and sounds ; we listen to Spenser s musical 

 reproduction of them. In the same way, the pleasure which 

 Chaucer takes in telling his stories has in itself the effect of 

 consummate skill, and makes us follow all the windings of his 

 fancy with sympathetic interest. His best tales run on like 

 one of our inland rivers, sometimes hastening a little and 

 turning upon themselves in eddies that dimple without re 

 tarding the current ; sometimes loitering smoothly, while 

 here and there a quiet thought, a tender feeling, a pleasant 

 image, a golden-hearted verse, opens quietly as a water-lily, 

 to fioat on the surface without breaking it into ripple. The 

 vulgar intellectual palate hankers after the titillation of 

 foaming phrase, and thinks nothing good for much that does 

 not go off with a pop like a champagne cork. The mellow 

 suavity of more precious vintages seems insipid : but the 

 taste in proportion as it refines, learns to appreciate the 

 indefinable flavour, too subtile for analysis. A manner has 



